User:Matt Yeager/RFA
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First off, thank you for your time in viewing this page.
I don't know who you are, so I can't tell how you voted on my recent request for adminship—whether you voted support (thanks, I needed it!), oppose (well, your vote wasn't going to be the make-or-break one anyways, and I learned a lot from many of the votes there), or nuetral (probably the most helpful, as they helped me to see that maybe there is some hope for a future adminship after I take care of my issues, since even though they saw my flaws, they didn't feel compelled to oppose my RFA)... or, heck, if you didn't vote there at all and stumbled across this page by mistake.
In any case, I now understand that I haven't fully understood Wikipedia. It's a complex creature, and I have had the wrong idea about it. I honestly did not realize that—oh, what the hay, let's make a list:
- It's not enough to use edit summaries—they must be useful and polite, as well as restrained. (I think there may be exceptions granted for one's own user space, but I don't particularily intend to find out.)
- People view RFA as a test of one's maturity that has been displayed as well as one's displayed ability to shut down vandalism, participate in namespace discussions, and contribute to mainspace.
- Edit warring is a bad idea, period, and that if you decide to bow out of an edit war, you should do so graciously.
- Internet insults last forever. Regardless of the context, they do last forever.
- Losing one's temper with anons (or anyone else) is a very, very Bad Thing for a prospective admin to do.
- People do not appreciate it when their contributions or the contributions of others are belittled in any way.
- Templates are not for messing around with. Also, voting to keep a template just because it's yours? Another bad idea.
- Exercising some restraint against other editors of one's "own" pages is a very Good Thing.
- Edit warring is a bad idea, period. (Yeah, I said it once before, but it bears repeating.)
Basically, for the next month or two (or three) I will be avoiding conflicts as best I can. Not by cowardice and hiding my head in the sand, but by making solid contributions to mainspace articles and (gasp!) focusing on building a better encyclopedia. It's funny—in my first RFA, I failed to reach consensus by a relatively slim margin, and my aims were impeded by being a pain in the namespace (though aided by mainspace contributions). In this one, I was helped by being a generally nicer person on namespace, and hurt by being (at times) an inconsiderate boor on mainspace and userspace.
So, basically, I will run again, but only on a self-nom, when I feel I'm ready for it. My goal is that, when I do run again, no one will have any reason to vote against me for anything done from this moment in time on. It's tough, but I'll try to remember that the goal isn't to amuse myself by writing childish edit summaries—it's to write a gosh-danged encyclopedia.
Sorry this went on so long... Thank you again for your time, and everything else. Happy editing, everyone! Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 01:16, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
